BOOKS

“An important and far-reaching addition to the vital genre of eco-fiction,Vivian Demuth’s Bear War-den fuses lyricism, romance, mystery and human interest in a novel that simultaneously critiques the slyly coded racist and sexist attitudes encountered by its female park warden protagonist. Suffused with the spirit of ‘bear,’ the euphoria of nature’s “subtle consciousness,” the understanding of those invested in the eco-village movement; enlightened also by the wisdom of First Nations people who were the original stewards of the land, this novel makes its unique impact through the inter-weaving of the various stories it tells – some real, some magic and all enthralling.” —Patricia Keeney, author of First Woman and You Bring Me Wings

From the vast expanse of the boreal forest, Vivian Demuth shows both an exquisite eye for detail and a profound concern for the larger environmental picture. Her lively poems show that, to an engaged observer with an accomplished literary imagination, the mountain forest is a complex, animated bio-community – resonating with beauty and sentient beings, large, small, and mysterious. {Guernica Editions}

Review of Fire Watcherby Anna Banks, “Giving Voice to the Wild Woman Archetype,” published by The Goose. Anna Banks is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Idaho.

Eyes of the Forest, is available from Pages Bookstore in Calgary, The Rabbit Hole in Grande Prairie, www.amazon.com or by phone from Alpine Book Peddlers in Canmore, AB at 1-866-478-2280 or via Paypal at http://www.alpinebookpeddlers.ca

Eyes of the Forest engages the greatest issues of our age without pretension through the eyes of both human and non-human life. Set in Canada’s boreal forest, the fire lookouts, tree planters, loggers, and oil patch rounders inhabit a narrative that raises the stakes to Planet Earth itself. Here are women sketching their identities on the front lines of an ecological and ideological battle–robust, soulful, revolutionary women, harbingers of a new mythology. Some of the men are lost or searching souls, ghosts of that dying culture of Adam’s right to dominion. At the heart of it all, a young woman and young man struggle for a love as beautiful and precarious as the wilderness around them. Passionate, exotic, and slightly apocalyptic, the novel challenges that American myth of “taming the West.”

“Demuth’s debut novel is a breath of fresh air. Her prose is wonderfully descriptive and confident, an ode to nature in its most primal form. City dwellers such as myself are reminded of what we do not know about the wild, and what we are all at risk of losing in our selfish shortsightedness.” –Kaylie Jones, award-winning author of Speak Now and A Soldier’s Daughter Never Cries

“This is a fun, people-filled story that will appeal to anyone who’s ever lived out in the mountains, and to anyone who’s wondered what it would be like.”–Levi Asher, litkicks.com (For the entire review, please see “A Review of Eyes of the Forest” under the Blogroll.)

“In this wonderful debut novel, ‘Eyes of the Forest’ is a metaphor for the consciousness inside a nature that suffers environmental abuse, making the book an arresting experiment in the techniques of magical realism. The heroine’s odyssey is absorbing, and the love story as gripping as the machinations of environmental politics….Profound and page-turning.” -Lyn Di Iorio, author of Killing Spanish and Assistant Professor of English at The City College of New York and CUNY Graduate Center

REVIEW of EYES OF THE FOREST by ANDY CLAUSEN,

–author of Home of the Blues: More Selected Poems

Eyes of the Forest is a real page-turner. I read it in a few hours straight through–the characters complex, seductive, non-stereotyped. Even though it takes place in the remote mountains of Northern Alberta, all the environmental, spiritual, political, and sexual dilemmas facing the twenty-first century merge into an apocalyptical climax that is both phantasmagoric and humanly believable. No character is all negative or pure, and I cared about every one of them. It is the most exciting prose read I’ve had in years. When a reader roots for outcomes and is constantly intrigued and surprised, and enthusiastically recommends it to all, the author has excelled at their job. I was amazed this was Vivian Demuth’s first published novel. I would hope the movie will find a director, cast, and budget worthy of this exhilarating work. –Andy Clausen

About Breathing Nose Mountain, a poetry chapbook: “This is a beautiful collection. I read through it thoroughly transported by Vivian Demuth’s Nose Mountain experience and her ability to transpose this into poetry. The opening long invocation poem is a stunner. The poem, ‘Tree Talk,’ that completes the sequence is an excellent place to end, ‘back within’ the experience, but with something that reaches beyond it, too.” –Marilyn Hacker, author of Selected Poems: 1965-1990 and Desesperanto.